The End of Orpheya
Illustration, Writing, and Design
What is a Gamebook?
How is "The end of Orpheya" Diffrent?
Written and designed by me, this book was designed to fix the flaw that most modern consumers face with these types of books. These books were popularized in the 70s and 80s where the culture of games was very diffrent. Games were expected to be very, very hard. This is mostly due to advances in technology making it easier to make longer and more engaging games for audiences where you don't have to rely on difficulty to keep your audience playing over and over again.
That type of playing results in a mostly negative experience for modern consumers who are used to getting a lot of content out of games. How does this book fix this issue? The stories are short and encourage the player to replay over and over again to see what happens if they go left instead of right. But not only because they are curious, but because the story will begin to change as they play.
The player will realize very quickly that all the stories are connected and exist in the same place- The magical Land of Orpheya. As they make decision as one character, the life of another character will change. Eventually they will realize the fate of the world is in their hands! What will they choose to do with it?
Illustrations
What did I Learn?
I built this project from the ground up with very little knowledge on how gamebooks like this were created! Many mistakes were made along the way! By the end I had made countless flowcharts and organizations spreadsheets to organize the flow of the story and worked very hard to forge my own way of writing a book like this. The biggest thing I learned was how to persevere- how to take a step back when I reach a dead end and try again from a diffrent angle.
What would I change?
The Name! I love this project and the world I created but the name "Orpheya" makes people hesitate. It's not very user friendly. Even I forget how it's pronounced sometimes!
Is this project done?
The book I wrote is fully playable with multiple storylines and two secret "true" endings. But I am not stopping here! I started this project as an interactive website which eventually morphed into a gamebook. Right now I think this project has a bright future as something else, perhaps even as true video game. But for now I am writing more storylines and more choices. The irony is, the end for orpheya is no where near!
